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The board of trustees for the Judson Independent school district voted Tuesday to eliminate more than 500 positions next school year.
District officials said cutting those positions from the 2026-2027 budget will eliminate Judson’s $35 million deficit and allow Bexar County’s fourth largest school district to begin rebuilding its cash reserves.
“Throughout these last (four) years, our money has been telling us what we cannot do. ‘You don't have money for this.’ ‘We don't have money for that.’ With (these) cost reductions, all of a sudden, things have changed,” Interim Superintendent Robert Jaklich told trustees. “Now we get a chance to talk about how we can make our money work for us.”
Jaklich said Judson’s cash reserves, called a fund balance, currently has 71 days of operating expenses.
“We need to be at 75 days of operating expenses,” Jaklich said, adding that the budget plan presented Tuesday would reverse the downward trajectory of the district’s fund balance.
Trustees voted Tuesday to follow Jaklich’s recommendation and eliminate a total of 536 positions. However, district administrators said at least 459 of those 536 positions will be covered through attrition and existing vacancies.
“Those 459 positions. Those are positions. Those aren't people,” Jaklich said. “That leaves us 77 positions left (with people in them).”
Trustees voted earlier this semester to permanently close four campuses at the end of the current school year. District officials said those closures eliminate the need for 284 positions. However, Judson officials expect to place most of the employees affected by the closures in positions at other campuses left open through attrition.
Deputy Superintendent Mary Duhart-Toppen said enough teachers quit each year for all of Judson’s certified teachers to be retained even with the recommended reduction of 258 teacher positions across the district.
“In 2025, our percentage teacher turnover rate was 21.5%. That's 317 teachers at the end of 2025,” Duhart-Toppen said. “And so, when you go back and look at what we're talking about right now, that 258 is less than what we have been losing over the last three years in our teacher turnover rate.”
Judson also has hundreds of current vacancies, spurred along in part by a hiring freeze implemented last fall because of the budget deficit. Out of 307 vacancies reported to the state in October, district administrators have identified 175 they say can be eliminated permanently. That leaves Judson with 77 positions left to cut.
“We have 132 positions left on that vacancy list, and we have 77 positions we still need to fill,” Jaklich said. “Our job right now in this transition is to see: Of these 77 positions we have, How many of these people could be utilized in the 132 positions that are on our vacancy list?”
District officials are framing these cuts as a way to improve academics and learning for students because they can replace uncertified teachers with certified teachers from the closing schools.
“We have 127 teachers that are certified teachers out of those campus consolidations. We have 140 District of Innovation non-certified teachers (across the district),” Jaklich said. “We are removing the 140 non-certified teachers out of the equation right now, while we put the certified teachers in there. That still gives us a surplus of positions for teachers, but every certified teacher has a job.”
“We have an opportunity right now to replace uncertified teachers with certified teachers in the classroom, putting up our students in the best possible solution, best possible classroom setting, where they are able to get rigorous, tier-one in-classroom instruction,” Duhart-Toppen said.
District administrators said campus principals will be given staffing allocations based on the new staffing numbers, and the principals will be given the flexibility to staff within those numbers according to the needs of their campus.
“We just had a conversation with principals yesterday, talking to them about, you're in a position this year where you get to build your dream team,” said Assistant Superintendent Kristin Saunders. “When we talk about academic trainers, librarians, all of those components, we really have an opportunity to match up a person's skill set with a campus need, and we have not been in that position in Judson ISD in a very, very long time.”
Trustee José Macias Jr. took issue with the positive framing, however. He was the only trustee to vote against eliminating the 536 positions.
“It's not easy for me to use the word wonderful when we're not going to fill 536 positions. That is not wonderful to me,” Macias said. “I certainly do not enjoy being in a position where we're going to not fill vacancies where I believe are needed and have to cut … even 77 (filled) positions.”
Jaklich acknowledged Macias’ concerns, and the assurances Stanford wanted that the cuts wouldn’t hurt class sizes or academics. But he said the entire central office cabinet was behind the plan.
“If our campuses aren't successful, if we don't do this right, we are the ones who bear the burden,” Jaklich said. ““Every single one of us owns this. If you ask any cabinet member, they can tell you the same thing I'm telling you about the presentation, because we built this together, because we believe that this is the best thing for us right now.”
Jaklich even posited that voters might be willing to approve a three-cent increase to the tax rate after Judson is out of debt. Last fall voters struck down Judson’s request for a Voter-Approved Tax Rate Increase, known as a VATRE, to reduce the budget deficit.
Jaklich said when he asked people in the community over the past five weeks why the VATRE failed they told him, “it’s not our job to pay for your debt.”
“If we decided to consider going out for a VATRE at just three cents, we can discuss different options, but at just three cents, it brings in $11.3 million,” Jaklich said. “At a 5% raise for all the employees that stayed with us, we still have $6 million to put in some monies into the fund balance, and some monies to put towards building our schools up, building innovative programs.”
Macias was doubtful that voters would approve a VATRE. He pointed out that four of the five VATREs on the ballot in Bexar County last fall failed.
Board President Monica Ryan praised the budget plan presented by the interim superintendent.
“What I've seen the last two months is kind of a dramatic shift in the mindset,” Ryan said.
“It's an ‘I can’ and ‘we can’ mindset, because if you say, ‘I can't,’ then we're going to get slash and burn economics,” Ryan added. “And that's really what those early plans looked like to me — was slashing and burning things across our district. Go scorched Earth.”
The idea to cut about 500 positions was first proposed back in December under the leadership of former superintendent Milton Fields. At the time, district administrators were recommending making the cuts over the course of two years.
Tuesday’s budget plan reaches 536 positions by working backwards from the goal of reducing the amount of the budget dedicated to staffing from 91% to 84% — another idea that was discussed in December.
Judson currently has a budget deficit of roughly $35 million, and district administrators calculate that reducing the staffing budget by 7% will save the district $35 million.
Judson administrators have earmarked six employee categories for a 7% reduction in their staffing budget: teachers, educational aides, campus administration, central office administration, professional support staff like counselors, librarians, and instructional coaches, and auxiliary staff like custodians and secretaries.
The 7% reduction is to the budget, not to positions. For instance, Judson’s budget plan cuts 258 teaching positions, which is a nearly 16% decrease in the number of teachers, but a 7% cut in the budget allocation for teachers.
Judson trustees also voted Tuesday to approve new campus boundaries and to reverse a previous vote that cut the number of days allocated to some principals, secretaries, and counselors.
The new campus boundaries reassign students to new attendance zones after four schools close this year.
Judson currently has two middle schools feeding into each of the district’s three high schools, and three or four elementary schools feeding into each middle school. But closing one middle school and three elementary schools has forced the district to create some split boundary lines.
“We did a redesign so that we could be sure that we had two middle schools each that fed into our campuses, while meeting with our goals of maintaining campus size, looking at equitable use of facilities, and making sure that we were utilizing campuses to the best of the ability that we could,” Assistant Superintendent Lacey Gosch said.
The new boundaries split Kitty Hawk Middle School between Judson High School and Veterans Memorial High School. Students at four different elementary schools will also be split up to attend different middle schools. The four elementary schools with split zones are Copperfield, Elolf, Salinas, and Crestview.
The number of days employees are assigned to work impacts how much they’re paid. Trustees previously voted to cut 10 days from elementary principals, secretaries, and PEIMS clerks and five days from middle school counselors. After eliminating the 536 positions, however, district administrators said the cuts to the number of days the employees work was no longer needed. The board voted unanimously Tuesday to give those days of work back to those employees.
“We can provide better educational opportunities for our kids this way, and we don't have to hurt our employees by cutting stipends, cutting days,” Ryan said.
